May 6th, 2018

The traditional May doldrums continue apace, as is expected.

It makes me both appreciate greatly the heavy run of days I had in April, covering for a surgical recovering full-timer, and get frustrated all over again for the month plus I was totally out of comission due to someone’s inability to pay attention to expiring work permits. Not much to do about it though, but move on.

Charon told me the other night (which I didn’t remember until last night, conveniently enough) that due to departmental boss’ new regulations, they’re going to try to stuff three bartenders in the main lounge on weekends. To the uninitiated, this doesn’t sound bad, I know. I however, have seen this trick attempted before and it generally just sucks. We have -two cash register stations, so unless you have one guy designated as a ‘breaker’ who only gets into their drawer when someone else is gone, it’s just an exercise in the creation of new and exciting bottlenecks in the work flow. Plus, then the tips are splitting three ways instead of two, which means 30% less money for everybody involved, which also kinda sucks. The flip side to this? The service bar guy still works by themselves. Great for normal nights. Gonna suck on concert event nights when that bar just gets murdered.

I wish that people who made rules for a place actually decided to spend some practical time behind the front lines so that they’d understand the thing they’re doing, rather than just arbitrarily making things complex for people. I also wish the casino had a “matching tips” policy, in which case I’d surely be 100% vested by now.

Neither of these things are likely to occur.

While the above wasn’t on the table when I negotiated out my new schedule, it has retroactively made my select part-time dates availability some of the more potentially lucrative shifts. Go me, I suppose. Sunday night, therefore, ends up being a fairly unique proposition. The service bar stays open only until about 7.00pm on Sunday night. Then after that bartender (Jerry the Older in this case) gives me my first break, they let him bugger off. Therefore I become the only open bar in the casino, and given that the service bar is open every day of the week now, this is pretty damned cool, ‘cuz with a low cocktail waitress count, it siphons everyone down to see -me- if they want a drink. I like this.

So Charon is running the show tonight, which was unexpected as Sunday is traditionally her night off. She commented however, that Norma is no longer employed, and as such, there’s a bit of a supervisory gap at present. I asked why, not expecting an answer, and was told in short something about her not passing ‘a test’. Whether that’s metaphorical or literal, I don’t know. It obviously wasn’t public knowledge, but she was throwing me a few crumbs regardless. Interesting then, from that standpoint alone.

It was our day barkeep’s birthday, so once she got relieved and cashed out, she shifted over to the other side of the bar to hang out with her fiance’ and several of our regulars, and they casually drank and laughed and assed around for a while. They were kinda entertaining, honestly, which was good given how slow things were.

Haley was our sole cocktail girl for the night, and was generally in a decent mood. I suspect she had her happy pills (literal thing in her case), but she was in good spirits, which is fine. I apparently enjoy being overly verbose, because at one point while talking, she just about giggled her head off and made a point to compliment how I can make a conversation out of a simple yes/no question. I chose to take that as a compliment, because… well. Yeah. Fair point, I suppose.

While I suspected that some of our regulars might end up in the land of the cut-offs, surprisingly they all kept themselves to a moderate pace and no one did anything but casually drink/gamble/bullshit and generally have fun. Even Jerry the Older got into the act, though staunchly refusing to touch anything but water and his chewing tobacco. Seems to be learning something from his expeience, at least.

The TV was taken up with hockey playoffs, NBA playoffs, and an epic 14-inning long Cubs game (they lost). It kept a contingent of folks around the bar, though, and that was all right.

Later on in the evening, Mary came by to hang out, drink and gamble, and was eventually joined by Brandon, a former bartender-turned-cage cashier. They’ve been friends forever it seems like.

At one point, Charon got a bag of potato chips and a little tub of french onion dip and tossed them on the back counter, inviting the employees to help themselves. This is nice in and of itself, but is doubly amusing because -technically- our department heads issued a recent edict that food was not to be consumed on the back of the bar. Charon’s just all ‘We don’t care what momma don’t allow, gonna eat my snack food anyhow’ and tells us to go for it.

Alrighty then. I indulged a little. Charon’s just fun. I’m going to her enjoy her run with us, however long it lasts.

Otherwise, nothing really noteworthy. I got out about 15 minutes early even, and given how slow we were, the tips were acceptable for a Sunday night. All good.

Closing observations :

If there is one thing that is a constant struggle for me, it’s knowing that there’s a purely superior way to do something (say, store empty beer boxes in the cabinet we have), and also recognizing that I’m the only person in the whole place that gives a shit about it, and that fighting that particular battle is going to be nothing but an exercise in frustration, and thus, just walking away from it. I have better hills to die on than that one.
A recent change in the liquor that the banquet deaprtment is going to carry, means that we’ve had three score bottles of miscellany dumped into our cupboards. This is good from the standpoint of having many extra things on hand. This is bad from the standpoint of taking three times as long to find them.

Next up : Thursday (at the service bar?!)